David Bruce: John Webster’s THE WHITE DEVIL: A Retelling — Cast of Characters and Act 1, Scene 1

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Male Characters

MONTICELSO, a Cardinal; afterwards Pope PAUL the Fourth. CAMILLO is his nephew.

FRANCISCO DE MEDICI, Duke of Florence; in the 5th Act disguised as a Moor, under the name of MULINASSAR.

BRACHIANO, otherwise PAULO GIORDANO URSINI, Duke of Brachiano, Husband to ISABELLA, and in love with VITTORIA.

GIOVANNI, his Son by ISABELLA.

LODOVICO, an Italian Count, but decayed. In the play, he is also called Lodowick. This retelling uses “Lodovico” consistently.

ANTONELLI, GASPARO, his Friends, and Dependents of the Duke of Florence.

CAMILLO, Husband to VITTORIA. Cardinal MONTICELSO is his uncle.

HORTENSIO, one of BRACHIANO’s Officers.

MARCELLO, an Attendant of the Duke of Florence, and Brother to FLAMINEO and VITTORIA.

FLAMINEO, Brother to MARCELLO and VITTORIA; Secretary to BRACHIANO.

CARLO and PEDRO: Conspirators with the Duke of Florence.

JACQUES, a young Moor, Servant to GIOVANNI.

CHRISTOPHERO, an assassin.

Female Characters

ISABELLA, Sister to FRANCISCO DE MEDICI, and Wife to BRACHIANO.

VITTORIA COROMBONA, a Venetian Lady; first married to CAMILLO, afterwards to BRACHIANO.

CORNELIA, Mother to VITTORIA, FLAMINEO, and MARCELLO.

ZANCHE, a Moor, Servant to VITTORIA.

Minor Characters

Six Ambassadors, Courtiers, Lawyers, Officers, Physicians, Conjurer, Chancellor, Registrar, Armorer, Attendants.

THE SCENE— ITALY

Notes:

Brachiano is the Duke of Brachiano.

A proverb stated, “The white devil is worse than the black.”

A white devil is an evil person who pretends to be a good person.

Possibly, a white devil is a good person whom everyone believes to be evil.

In Elizabethan culture, a man of higher rank would use words such as “thee,” “thy,” “thine,” and “thou” to refer to a servant. However, two close friends or a husband and wife could properly use “thee,” “thy,” “thine,” and “thou” to refer to each other.

The word “sirrah” is a term usually used to address a man of lower social rank than the speaker. This was socially acceptable, but sometimes the speaker would use the word as an insult when speaking to a man whom he did not usually call “sirrah.” Close friends, whether male or female, could also call each other “sirrah.” Fathers could call their sons “sirrah.”

This society believed that the mixture of four humors in the body determined one’s temperament. One humor could be predominant. The four humors are blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. If blood is predominant, then the person is sanguine (optimistic). If yellow bile is predominant, then the person is choleric (bad-tempered). If black bile is predominant, then the person is melancholic (sad). If phlegm is predominant, then the person is phlegmatic (calm). If a person were ill, the illness was caused by an imbalance of humors. The humors could be put back into balance through such things as bloodletting or purging.

— 1.1 —

In Rome, Italy, Antonelli and Gasparo entered a room in which was Count Lodovico, who was waiting to find out how he would be punished for his crimes. Antonelli and Gasparo were Count Lodovico’s friends.

Lodovico asked, “Am I banished?”

Antonelli nodded and replied, “It grieved me much to hear the sentence.”

“Ha, ha,” Lodovico said. “Oh, Democritus, thy two gods who govern the whole world are courtly reward and punishment.”

Democritus was an ancient Greek philosopher.

Lodovico continued, “Lady Fortune is a complete whore. If she gives anything, she deals it out in small portions, so that she may take it all away at one swoop.”

A “swoop” is 1) a stroke, and/or 2) a commercial deal.

He continued, “This is what it is to have great, important enemies! May God requite them. Your wolf no longer seems to be a wolf except when she’s hungry.”

A hungry, needy man must show a wolfish nature — for example, when he must rob someone in order to get food. But wealthy people can hide their wolfish nature until they wish to display it.

Gasparo said, “You call those enemies men of princely rank.”

“Oh, I pray for them,” Lodovico said. “The violent thunder is adored by those who are smashed into pieces by it.”

“Come, my lord,” Antonelli said. “You are justly sentenced. Look just a little back into your former life. You have in the last three years ruined the noblest earldom.”

Counts and earls are the same in rank. A Continental count is socially equivalent to an English earl.

Gasparo said, “Your followers have swallowed you, like mummia, and being sick with such unnatural and horrid medicine, they vomit you up in the gutter.”

Mummia was a medicine that was made from human mummies, or from dried human corpses.

Antonelli said, “You have staggered through all the damnable degrees of drinking.

“One wealthy citizen, who is the lord of two fair manors, called you master, only so he could get caviar from you.”

Gasparo said, “Those noblemen who were invited to your prodigal feasts, in which the phoenix, only one of which exists at a time, scarcely could escape being swallowed by your throats, laugh at your misery, fore-judging you to be a worthless falling star made up of noxious mists drawn from the earth and certain to be soon dissipated in the air.”

Antonelli said, “They make jests about you, and they say you must have been begotten in an earthquake because you have ruined such fair lordships.”

“Very good,” Lodovico said. “This well goes with two buckets: I must attend to the pouring out of each.”

Lodovico was the well, and Antonelli and Gasparo were the buckets that, as one was being filled, the other was being emptied. They were taking turns pouring out bad news and criticism to Lodovico.

“Worse than these,” Gasparo said, “you have brought about certain murders here in Rome, murders that are bloody and full of horror.”

Lodovico said, “Ah, they were flea bites.

“Why then didn’t the authorities take my head?”

Lodovico could have been beheaded to pay for his crimes.

“Oh, my lord!” Gasparo said. “The law sometimes mediates — avoids extremes and settles cases by mediation. The law thinks that it is good to not always steep violent sins in blood. This gentle penance of banishment may both end your crimes, and by force of the example better these bad times.”

Lodovico said, “So be it, but I wonder then how it is some great men escape this banishment. There’s Paulo Giordano Ursini — the Duke of Brachiano — who now lives in Rome, and by secret panderism seeks to prostitute the honor of Vittoria Corombona — she who might have gotten my pardon by giving one kiss to the duke.”

Paulo Giordano Ursini, the Duke of Brachiano, had fallen in love with Vittoria Corombona although they were married to other people.

If Vittoria were to kiss the Duke of Brachiano and request that he go to the pope and ask that Lodovico be pardoned, the Duke of Brachiano would do what he was requested to do.

Antonelli said, “Have a full man within you: Be resolute and fortified. We see that trees bear no such pleasant fruit there where they grew first, as where they are transplanted. Perfumes, the more they are rubbed, the more they render their pleasing scents, and so affliction presses out virtue fully, whether true, or impure.”

Proverbs seldom provide comfort to the sufferer, although they may console the comforter.

Lodovico said, “Stop with your false comforts. I’ll make Italian cut-works in my enemies’ guts if I ever return.”

“Cut-works” are openwork embroidery. Lodovico was threatening to put holes — such as those made by swords and daggers — in the bodies of his enemies.

“Oh, sir,” Gasparo said.

“I am patient,” Lodovico said. “I have seen some who are ready to be executed give pleasant looks and money to and have grown familiar with the knave hangman. So do I. I thank them, and I would account them nobly merciful, if they would dispatch me quickly.”

Hangmen are executioners; they can dispatch — kill — quickly, or slowly. It is a good idea to be on good terms with your executioner.

Lodovico was intending to give money to his own kind of executioners — two people who would execute his orders to try to get his banishment repealed.

“Fare you well,” Antonelli said. “We shall find the right time, I don’t doubt, to repeal your banishment.”

A sennet sounded to announce that some important people were arriving.

Lodovico said, “I am forever bound to you.”

He gave them some money and said, “This is the world’s alms; please make use of it.”

The money was for their future help in getting his sentence of banishment lifted. Lodovico, however, was also referring to a proverb as his alms — the proverb stated what the world had taught him and it was something that others could benefit from knowing.

David Bruce: John Webster’s THE WHITE DEVIL: A Retelling — Cast of Characters and Act 1, Scene 1

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